In order to make NetBSD work with modern graphics cards, The NetBSD
Foundation has hired me to port the current generation of Linux's
direct rendering manager (DRM) to NetBSD, with support for kernel mode
switching (KMS) and the graphics execution manager (GEM).

That is excellent news. :-)

We could have taken the approach of OpenBSD and adapted the previous
generation of Linux DRM with user-mode switching (UMS) to support
newer hardware. Gregroire Sutre has ported OpenBSD's work to NetBSD
at<https://github.com/gsutre/netbsd-drmgem>. However, by using KMS,
our upstream for Intel drivers will be Intel itself, our upstream for
AMD/ATI drivers will be AMD/ATI itself,&c.

I agree that porting DRM+GEM+KMS is a better approach in the long run.
Grégoire